Incandescence
by EAnna23je
Summary: "Trust me," he said and I shivered, eagerly wrapped my arms around his waist as he sat in front of me and revved the engine to life. A part of me crave this, craved the intimacy from this lovely stranger, this familiar, beautiful smile...
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: This was commissioned by vampygurl402 on behalf of arashi wolf's birthday. Alas, I apologize for its belated arrival. I found myself unable to finish, but for now, Happy Belated Birthday! What follows is Part 1 of this technically "two-shot" Jacella fic ;) Enjoy!**

**Disclaimer: Someday, Bella will meet a Time Lord, who will take her back in time just long enough to convince her younger self to correct a single mistake ;p**

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><p><strong>INCANDESCENCE<br>**

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><p>The last time I had been to Forks, Washington, was six years ago before my father died. He had been promoted to the Chief of Police and wanted Renee to send me out to celebrate with him. Charlie's idea of a celebration was fishing on the La Push Reservation with his best friend, Billy. Naturally he dragged me out into the wet wilderness any chance he could get. My visits had become far less frequent than the yearly summer trip by the time I was thirteen years old. Even with my stick thin figure I was starting to not look like his baby girl anymore and we just didn't know how to connect like adults. Like me, Charlie was never big on overt physical affection.<p>

_The summer before I turned fourteen we celebrated his new promotion in grand style, fishing. I sucked but I liked the fact that the sport required no talking. Charlie and Billy kept the beers rolling along and I might have enjoyed the silence, if it weren't for an annoyingly persistent voice in my ear. _

_"Hey Bells, you really suck at this."_

**No joke, kid.**

_"Seriously, you haven't caught a fish all morning!" he said while making a perfect cast over our heads._

_I rolled my eyes but kept my eyes on my own line bobbing in the water. _

_He laughed. "Are you sure you're thirteen? Cause from where I'm sitting, I think I'm lightyears older than you in terms of skills, baby." _

_I pulled the bill of my dad's baseball cap lower over my forehead in frustration. _

**Does this kid ever shut up?**

_"I could show you how, if you want," he added with a tilt of his jaw. I glanced up at the kid in his effort to sit taller than me. _

_"I think I got it," I answered with more than a little sarcasm and immediately wished I hadn't opened my fat mouth. Because not only did the kid's black eyes flash down at me but he turned the full force of his broad toothy grin my way. I didn't think anyone could smile like that and mean it. _

_"Really, Bells? Because I'm kind of an expert."_

_"I doubt it." I glanced past him to see both our fathers struggling not to snicker out loud. Embarrassment colored my cheeks and I hung my head lower. _

_"Oh you'll see! I'll have another one reeled in within the next five minutes!"_

_I lifted an eyebrow doubtfully at him. "Five minutes?" And just when I thought the kid couldn't be any goofier, he had the nerve to stand up with a manly shrug. _

_"Sure, sure… You just watch and see, baby."_

_"I'm pretty sure you're two years younger than me, Jacob."_

_"Age is just a number, Bella!" His voice took on a boyishly high pitch then, however as his fishing line stretched taught and the rod arched dangerously low to the water. _

_"Looks like he's snared one, Billy!" Charlie hooted._

_"Reel 'em in, son!" Billy cheered with a salute of beer can. _

_Jake was bent half over the water in his struggle to hold onto the rod. I was on my feet before I had time to think about what I was doing. _

_"Jake! Be careful!" I said as I put a hand on his shoulder. He jumped beneath my touch and turned to look up at me with an even brighter grin._

_"Told ya, Bells!" He exclaimed and then his eyes went wide as the fish gave a vicious jerk. We both yelped as Jacob followed his rod into the river and I somehow followed Jacob. _

_"Let go!" I heard one of our fathers shout before my world was distorted with the rush and roaring water. I kicked my way up to the surface and saw the edge of the boat and heard our fathers laughing their asses off._

**Nice**,_ I thought, before I realized Jacob was nowhere to be found. _

_"Jake?" I called and gulped a healthy dose of river water in the process. Panic filled my chest as I remembered the fishing rod and his fingers clamped tightly over it. Had he been caught up in the line somehow? I sucked in a desperate breath and dove back down, forcing my eyes open against the dark water. I could barely make out my own hands let alone the fish in the water. But my hands made contact with something far too large to be a fish and I saw a flash of dark eyes meet mine in panic in the water. _

_And then I saw him struggling to pull his rod free of the rocks. _

_You stupid ass! I wanted to scream at him. The rod wasn't worth his life. With more strength than I thought I possessed, I grabbed one of his hands and pulled him up after me. I missed the next few seconds of water before we broke the surface and were pulled back in by our fathers. _

_The next thing I remembered, I was glaring at the kid with a blanket and my father's arms around me, my teeth chattering. And Jacob was smiling. _

I got sick that summer with pneumonia and Renee forbade Charlie to take me fishing again. And yet, among the many tirades I had heard out of her mouth in the last few days, the one thing she mentioned most was the fishing.

"I should have let him take you again, Bella. He loved taking you fishing!" Renee sobbed next to me, her hands clawing at my arm. I stiffened.

_Yeah, well you should have thought about that before you thought the plane fair was too expensive for yearly trips._

Billy glanced over at my mother for the tenth time since the service began. I tried not to notice the other people around us. Charlie asked for very little in his will. Just that his best friend give his eulogy at La Push if he died in the line of duty, and that I inherit his house. Renee insisted we move as soon as she heard the news…_again_. This time, we were moving to the place she and Charlie first met, the place she fell in love for the first time. She broke up with her boyfriend Phil over it. She said it would be good for us both to go back to our roots.

After all I _was _nineteen with nothing going for me. I started school in Arizona but felt like one of us needed a stable job and that person wasn't going to be my mother. School would have to wait. My life would have to wait. I didn't listen too much to what Renee had to say anymore, especially after what she did to Phil. But all this was coming from the woman who thought that crystals were cosmic connectors to ancient energy sources. And she swore could _feel _Charlie all over Forks since we had arrived, that he _approved _us coming here. I didn't want to hear it. I wanted to run away into the wilderness and try to pretend my father hadn't just died. I wanted to drown out hers and all the other meaningless sympathetic voices describing a loss I wasn't sure how to feel.

Billy looked at me, then and his annoyance melted into something deeper and sadder. "Charlie Swan is survived by his daughter, Isabella Marie Swan."

When I heard my name, I snapped. The blood began to pound in my ears and sweat began to coat my skin as I struggled for air.

"Bella?" Renee's lips moved in front of my face but I couldn't hear her, didn't want to hear her. The rest of the guests stood and honored my father in the Quileute way.

My feet took me to his graveside. The tribe had made an exception Renee told me earlier that morning, something about a grandmother of his I had never met before and old family ties.

At the moment, I was watching my mother throw herself down in violent sobs while his body was lowered into the dirt. I felt like I was watching from somewhere far away while Harry Clearwater half carried, half led my mother away with the others. Billy led the procession in his wheelchair. His daughters, Rachel and Rebecca followed closely behind.

It began to rain, the kind of bone chilling rain that you feel in your bones. I didn't try to move closer to Charlie's graveside. But I sank to my knees anyway, soiling my tights in the mud. I ran my fingers through the curling dark mass on my head and tried to find a reason to get up and follow the others. I stared at that empty hole in the ground and wondered if Charlie wasn't the lucky one for dying from blood loss after a shoot-out at the hospital. He could stay here in this place he loved forever.

_Why didn't you fish with him more? Why didn't you fight harder to see him, Bella? _A voice that sounded too much like Renee echoed in my mind. I was an awful daughter. For letting the distance make us distant, for never trying. I spent so much time trying to mother my irresponsible mother that I forgot how to be a kid. Charlie never got to know me as a teenager. Most days I suspect I don't know myself all too well.

But now it was far too late.

Now I knelt at the grave of a stranger who used to burn my grilled cheese sandwiches and tied my hair in pigtails, who taught me how to hook worms and not faint at the sight of blood. But I would never know him really and he had lost his chance to know me. And the injustice of it all, the unfairness, made me furious.

My fist hit the mud and it spattered on my face. I growled as I hit it again and kept hitting it until a pair of dirty black boots came to stand before me. I was embarrassed at being caught like a ten year old instead of an almost twenty year old, playing in the muck.

"Need some help with that mud pie?" a very deep and vaguely familiar voice spoke. My eyes lifted to find the source. His long jean-clad legs were thick with muscle and the russet skinned hands at his side were clenched into large fists. He wore a black tee shirt that seemed to barely constrain the hard planes of his chest, almost as if he had grown too quickly into the fabric. And his face was squared off into perfectly cut lines, framed by shaggy black hair that hung in varying lengths from brow to chin. Almost like he cut it himself, and not necessarily all at once.

A strange warm sensation twisted in my gut when I looked into those black gleaming eyes. Those eyes seemed to burn through my soul. And I might have imagined it, but I could have sworn he sucked in a sharp breath. Air seemed to be in short supply I found, as he held out an open palm and smiled.

_God, that smile…_

White, blinding and determined to split his face in two, practically incandescent. That smile made me want to agree to anything.

"Wanna get out of here?"

I nodded numbly and put my muddy and significantly smaller hand into his. His natural body heat seemed to shoot through my skin and fill me up. I hated the cold and Forks seemed determined to keep me that way. So it was no surprise that I stepped even closer to this mysterious Quileute giant and let him wrap his arm snugly around my shoulders.

The rain let up a bit as he used his other arm to lift my legs up from under me and deposited me onto his motorcycle. And his touch grew almost tender as he lifted my feet on either side and placed them where they needed to go. He glanced up at me briefly and again I couldn't shake that feeling of familiarity as he cupped my face between his palms to wipe some of the mud away. His touch and his eyes were almost too much then. Almost as if he sensed this, his thumb pressed my trembling lower lip.

"Trust me," he said and I shivered, eagerly wrapped my arms around his waist as he sat in front of me and revved the engine to life. A part of me crave this, craved the intimacy from this lovely stranger, this familiar, beautiful smile. And as he drove me away from Charlie's graveside, from my mother's hysterics and the tribe's judgment, I felt the heaviness begin to crumble enough. It was just a crack, a sliver and my emotions came to the surface for air.

I sobbed against my stranger's jacket until the rain washed my tears and the wind dried them away. We didn't drive very far, not that I expected us to keep on running. Real people didn't get to run away from life, from death. Real people had to face the cold and the rain and endure.

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><p><strong>Review: If you're a Wolf Girl ;)<strong>


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: I have been moved by the response to part one! I wanted to provide a different feel/scenario than Frozen Dawn this go around. Namely, what if Bella had no reason whatsoever to care about the Cullens?**

**Disclaimer: Someday, Jacob will get the uber balls to go back in time and demand that Stephanie Meyer give him a better ending than his first love's creepy baby love. _shudders..._**

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><p><strong>INCANDESCENCE<br>**

**Part II**

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><p>My stranger lived in a cabin by the sea at the end of a narrow road that faded into a path. For some reason I found it strange that he would choose to live here alone. He seemed like the kind of guy to stick by family. But then I could hear the roar of the waves against the cliffs and beach La Push was famous for. And in spite of the rain I could see the fragile beauty of this hidden place.<p>

I saw that the house was halfway through a coat of fresh paint. A makeshift lean-to stood against the side of the house where the paint cans and brushes sat. He was painting the house brown, I noted with amusement. Though on closer inspection, as we pulled right up to the lean-to and he helped me off first, the brown was a rich mahogany. It was the color of the earth, the color of the trees and, unfortunately for me, the color of my plain and boring eyes.

I heard the engine cooling nearby, but didn't hear my stranger come up behind me until his hand slipped through mine and our fingers locked. It was easy, like breathing, like we had known each other forever, like our hands were made for each other. I was well aware I was going through some life altering emotional crisis, but I won't ever excuse myself for feeling so..._right_ in that moment.

"Still need to finish that. Hard with all the damned rain," he mumbled like it was an afterthought to the conversation we were already having in our minds.

I smiled at the thought and squeezed his hand in response. I didn't feel like talking. Never could make my mouth work for me like I wanted it to, not like the voice in my head. Every time I tried to speak I stuttered and ended up gasping for breath. Not because I had a diagnosed speech impediment but because I always felt like I had to struggle to keep up. My stranger didn't make me feel like this. He didn't rush me, didn't push. Yet I had risked more with him already today than I had in the last six years.

"Come on, let's get you inside," he said. The door wasn't locked and when he opened it I could see why. The house was sparse and very spartan. The living room and kitchen were all one large open space. Couches and chairs there were in ample abundance, as if company was a regular thing. This surprised me.

My stranger grinned down at me and rubbed the back of his head with his free hand. "Yeah, I wasn't exactly expecting company. I mean, obviously the pa-_guys_ were over, but...I didn't think _you'd_ come."

I looked up at him then and realized just how much taller this giant was compared to me. A very small logical part of me thought this could potentially be a stupid situation, a very Bella situation to put it nastily. My logical conscience reared her head at the red flag. How was I to know he wasn't a 60 Minutes special rapist?

_Why did you get on the bike with him then? _my conscience reasoned. She shut back up again thankfully. I listened to logical Bella too often anyway. Through the years I convinced myself Renee needed me more than Charlie. All the times I said no to dates because I was convinced it wasn't in my best interest to suffer the kind of heartache my mother paraded. The friendships I let fade because I was too much of a coward to fight for anything. This time, I would do this for me.

I didn't think it was possible, but his russet skinned cheeks turned red in the shadows. Again, it was like he read my thoughts. "I don't want you to think...that is..." he stammered.

I reached up and slipped my hand between the front of his jacket and felt the hard ridges of muscle covering his chest.

_It's okay..._I wanted to tell him.

"I, um..." he began, eyes fixated on the place where my hand rested on his chest. Then, before I could pull away, his hand rushed up to cover mine and keep it in place. His eyes squeezed shut briefly.

"Do you have any lights?" I asked, aloud, finally. My voice was rough and thin as paper. From disuse or crying was anybody's guess.

My stranger's eyes shot open. He seemed almost too eager to flip the light switch, and then growled, "Shit, the breaker must have flipped. Lemme check."

My eyes wandered after he disappeared. I learned many things about my beautiful stranger from the way the chairs and couch were used, but not by him. They didn't fit him, somehow, as though another had chosen the furniture for him. But the carvings collecting dust on the mantle piece...those were another story. I was reaching up for one of them before I realized my feet had carried me there. Different animals and symbols had been depicted. But the one that drew me most was in the far, shadowed corner. I had to brush my fingers over the prickles and pull it forward to see it was a wolf, crouched low in defense over a fallen woman.

I couldn't help my gasp, or the fact I broke at least a dozen first time guest rules by pulling it off and to my chest. The wolf was so...terrified in this depiction and the fallen woman was clearly not his prey. He was also way larger than normal and when I looked into the carefully carved eyes I could almost swear the creature _looked _at me. I shook myself slightly.

_Easy there, Bells. Think we've had enough emotional hysteria for one day without adding delusions to the mix._

An embarrassing little whelp escaped my lips as the stranger spoke up, suddenly beside me. "Took me six months."

I glanced up, guilty and ready for the accusation in his eyes only to find there was none. He kept his hands shoved into his pockets instead of snatching his art away from me. Instead his eyes seemed to touch the carving.

"Not cause I'm fucking Michelangelo though. I had to start over _four _different times." He chuckled to himself and I offered a grimace, the closest smile I was capable of giving for now. After a moment, he pulled one hand from his pocket to take hold of the carving and brush his thumb over the fallen woman and then, accidentally, my hand.

"It's an old tribal legend...about a woman who sacrifices herself for her mate."

_The wolf? _I wondered with a lilt of an eyebrow. I could feel the expression taking shape in spite of myself. And it only made his smirk widen to one of those breathtaking smiles. I sucked in a breath in return and then the air between us seemed too warm and not nearly hot enough yet.

"Come on, honey. Rain's let up. There's something I wanna show you." He took the carving and set it back into its veiled corner, replacing the emptiness in my hands with his own. And I knew in that moment, whoever he was, for an infinitesimal moment, I was no longer alone. My insides tugged viciously at the thought, and I stumbled like a two year old as he led me outside his cabin, past the clearing and forest. Thankfully the rain had let up enough so only a faint mist coated our bodies.

"I gotcha," he said as we first descended the rocky hillside. I knew my grip had to be painful, but he took it in stride and never complained as he helped me down the rest of the way to the beach below. In those moments it was his hands, grazing my waist, my hips and his smile that got me through the worst moments.

I never told people, but part of my clumsiness was because one of my legs was just a hair shorter than the other one. I tried padding my shoe, but it made things awkward going down or up pretty much anything. It made the dance class my mother signed me up for as a kid embarrassing and painful.

The stranger seemed to sense this inherently. Again he didn't rush me, but let me choose our pace. I liked that. I liked that he didn't swoop me up in his arms and carry me away like a cripple. I liked that he still held my hand as we walked together down the beach. I liked the fact I forgot about Charlie until I saw the ocean rushing in.

_"Easy, kiddo! Don't swim out too much further or the tide will getcha," Charlie laughed. _

_"I can do it, Dad!" my little eight-year-old self protested. _

_"Bells, wait! Hold on to me!" he called out. But I already saw the wave rushing in, my mouth open in a scream as it crushed us. I felt my body being sucked out to sea, until a hand gripped my hair painfully and pulled me back into those familiar, strong arms._

"Bells?" a deep and mellow voice called, pulling me past the tears clouding my vision, the memories crushing me just like the water almost did years ago. I blinked to let the tears fall and his blurry image cleared.

Words fell from my lips before I could catch them. "I almost drowned once. Charlie took me far out into the ocean. I barely knew how to swim, but I wanted to keep going further. I felt safe in his arms. And then the wave came. For a moment, I felt the water crushing me, the moment when he lost his grip and I was pulled under. But he saved me..." I sucked in a suddenly necessary breath.

An abnormally warm hand slipped around my shoulder and dung between the hidden space of hair and neck and drew me closer. I didn't realize I was sobbing until his shirt was damp from my tears and my fingers digging rivulets into his back. Time escaped the emotional seconds as he took me in his arms and whispered strangely familiar words against the crown of my head. Once upon a time I could understand some Quileute and the words still tugged sharply at memory, til I was grasping to unveil the meaning. For a moment, I let myself savor the intimacy, the closeness the stranger offered me.

My tears were replaced by another bout of rain, harder, harsher this time. Wordlessly we pulled away once his stream of words faded and in the silence I looked up into his eyes, my fingers wrapped tighter round the clenched muscle in his back. I wanted to _know_ so desperately then, wanted to know why he was familiar, why he was at Charlie's funeral. Wanted to know why I wanted him so much in that thick, painfully sweet moment when I understood he knew _me _by the sadness in his eyes.

And my lips parted when I in turn knew why I did not recognize him any more. I knew in that moment only one person would have picked me up and carried me away from all this. Only one person had ever meant so much to me so young that it frightened me with its intensity. Of all the friendships of my youth, his had only ever been my greatest regret. And just as I feared the feelings I felt after saving his life years ago, I stepped away from Jacob Black and fought the mad confusing tumble of panic turning in my head.

Gold flashed brightly in his pitch black eyes the same moment lightning pierced the sea and my name fell from his perfect lips, a plea, "Bells."

I covered my mouth this time before any more words could come tumbling out and took another awkward step back.

Pain twisted the square handsome face and he reached for me. "Bells, please."

"You knew!" I shouted, surprising myself with the force coming behind hit. I stumbled against rocks as I continued to retreat and he, of course, to follow.

He shook his head and held those large, powerful hands open before him. "Bells, I..."

"You knew I didn't remember you," I rasped and dug my nails into my palms. I looked anywhere but his face, from the horror in his eyes.

"We were best friends..." he began pitifully in his new deep tone, "I thought-"

"We barely knew each other," I blurted, "We...we talked on the phone a few times, shared a few summers, that's it!" I said, but I didn't believe myself. I knew better. Because Jacob Black was one of my biggest regrets. And I was only telling a small piece of our story. I sensed him still and as if on command, I froze as well. I shut my eyes against the pounding rain and tried to breathe.

"I'm sorry," he finally said and then, "_please _stay. You don't even have to speak to me..._just_-stay-with me for a few more hours, a few minutes is all I'm asking and you'll never see me again."

I hated it. Hated the way his words brought back the familiar guilt. How could I have not known? I should have recognized him at first contact, the moment I saw that brilliant smile on his face again. It was the same.

_He is not the same_, my conscience reminded me.

"Okay," I heard myself whisper, but I didn't take his hand on the way back up to his cabin. Instead he shadowed my steps as I stumbled and struggled the hard way, keeping my arms and my heart wrapped tight against my former best friend and my new need for him.

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><p><strong>Review: If you want more Jacella ;) <strong>


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